


Abaddon

by RedHorse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternative Universe - no wizarding war, Ambiguity, Auror Harry Potter, Dubious Consent, Harry gets a lightning bolt scar (sort of), Lord Voldemort - philosopher, M/M, Manipulation, Mental connection, Mysteries, Rough Sex, incarcerated Tom Riddle, sotl vibes, the Knights of Walpurgis - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 04:19:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20594594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Abaddon: a place of destruction or an angel of the abyss.Tom Riddle is interred in Azkaban at sixteen. Lord Voldemort's rise charts a different course.





	Abaddon

**Author's Note:**

> This story had to be pinned down and stabbed through the heart more than once. I think what's come of an arduous process is going to be worth it, though!
> 
> Thanks to mayexist, trashgoblinwizardparty, cybrid and miraculous for holding my hand and beta reading. <3

**1943**.

Tom paused in the doorway, twisting the ring on his finger. Beyond the dining room, the antechamber of the entryway held a massive gilded mirror. Through it Tom saw his own reflection. He looked wide-eyed. Young. Behind him the chandelier was twisting slowly on its chain from the magical ricochet. Crystal was so sensitive to curse-fire. The table stretched beneath the swaying light, its glossy white dishes and polished silver table service practically undisturbed.

His grandmother was slumped over the table. Something red was spreading over the white tablecloth beneath her cheek. It alarmed Tom for a moment, then he relaxed again. It wasn’t blood. _Avada Kedavra_ was a bloodless curse. It was only the wine she’d been drinking, upset when she fell.

She had barely moved when it all happened. His father had stood up in outrage, and fallen where he stood. He was on the near side of the table, so the mirror showed him, too, nothing but a large lump. Meat and hide and cloth. His face was turned toward Tom and his expression was restful. Once dead, Tom reasoned, everyone looked the same. A stupid, slack-jawed peace that waited for anyone too weak to avoid it.

His grandfather had come at Tom, hands outstretched like claws, after his father died. He was by the window, thrown backward by the force of Tom’s second hurried curse, he’d slid down into a sitting position. His head hung, chin to chest. Other than the streaks of grey at his temples, he could easily have been mistaken for his son.

But his grandmother had merely waited for him, frozen in her chair. She hadn’t even dropped her fork until the magic took her.

Tom stowed his wand and took two brisk steps into the corridor. He had the odd urge to close the dining room doors behind him, but as he turned to do so, the front door opened with a bang.

“Stop right there!” cried an Auror.

Tom’s hasty shield blocked the first _Petrificus_ but the second and third came in such close succession, and he was on his back foot. Where had the Aurors come from, and so quickly?

The Curse didn’t fully adhere, though, and Tom was able to shake it off after a half-moment. But before he could lift his wand--

_“Incarcerous_!” 

The softly glowing ropes sailed toward Tom and he gave a bitter cry as they wound around him.

He swiftly changed tactics as the Aurors closed in cautiously. He made his eyes wide and teary.

“You’re too late! Someone’s killed them all.”

No one who knew Tom would believe he could do it. There were no witnesses. Only—

He dropped his wand from the hand that was now tied tightly to his side, and shifted his foot in what could appear to be a careless misstep, but before he could grind his heel down and snap his own wand, he hesitated. He remembered the way the wand had seemed to call to him as soon as Ollivander pulled its weathered, waiting box from the shelf.

That moment of sentimentality was one he’d lament for fifty long years.

“_Accio_!” shouted an Auror, and Tom’s wand flew to his outstretched palm.

_Priori Incantatem _was all it took. There was no trial.

**2000**.

Harry _felt _the curse before he saw it. Sirius would have been proud. He dropped to a crouch and pivoted from the waist, careful not to wrench his ankle — again — in the movement. At the same time he relaxed his wrist so his wand was positioned for the movement — a quick upward stroke — before he had his target in his sights.

The curse he’d sensed coming sailed over his head, bright red, probably a Stunning Spell based on the way, even in passing, it filled Harry with the bizarre urge to yawn. His own spell was out an instant before the incantation, so that he was still shouting, “_Vespa Maxima!_” when the curse light struck his target right on the nose.

“Potter, what the _fuck_!” exclaimed said target, clutching his rapidly-swelling face. 

“Sorry, Macmillan,” Harry said solemnly, but he was grinning. “You shouldn’t have tried to hex me first.” He scanned the room but all the others were engaged. He relaxed his stance. There wouldn’t be another curse sailing his way any time soon.

“Wands away!” called Moody, their training captain.

“And it’s not reversible!” Macmillan continued to complain as he stowed his wand. His voice was getting more nasal by the moment. “I hab a dade!”

A date. Harry winced. “This way you’ll be sure they like you for your personality?” He tugged Macmillan’s hand away from his face. “Here, let me try something.”

Macmillan’s eyes might have widened, but it was hard to say as they were rapidly swelling shut. Harry put his wand where Macmillan’s cheekbone should have been and murmured a string of Hindi, then held his breath. Sometimes his imitation of the family healing spells made things worse, but usually their impulsive use paid off. Luckily, this time it was the latter. The swelling quickly receded and Macmillan’s continuing glower took on an edge of relief.

“Potter, I said ‘wands away’!” 

“Sorry, Captain Moody, but Macmillan has a date,” Harry explained, smirking at his fellow trainee.

“And no irreversible hexes, we’ve been through this,” Moody continued to grouse, as though Harry hadn’t said anything. Moody’s hearing was terrible, and apparently a magical ear would interfere with his magical eye, or something like that. Harry’s dad had explained it once.

“Sorry, captain,” Harry said again, tucking his wand into its holster. “On both counts. I meant to cast the hex, and got the curse instead.”

Moody looked at Harry speculatively. “When was your wand last checked?”

Harry bit his lip and avoided his eye. Moody sighed.

“Monthly, Potter. Monthly calibrations. I shouldn’t have to — oh, for Merlin’s sake, Longbottom, what did you do this time?”

Harry caught a glimpse of the majestic elephant ears sprouting from either side of Gregory Goyle’s head across the room, and a red-faced Neville, holding up his hands as though to disclaim responsibility.

He thought he might get the benefit of Neville’s handiwork beyond just the entertainment value of seeing the look on Goyle’s face, but Moody fixed Harry with a parting glare over his shoulder as he started to stalk off.

“_Today_,” he said firmly, pointing at Harry’s wand holster.

Harry sighed. That was a direct order, and he always tried to follow those, even if he left the more indirect variety open to interpretation. So after the showers he went directly to the Tenth Underground Floor.

The Department of Wandlore was one of several Departments considered “new” by Ministry standards. But the new Departments had been there since Harry first took any interest in the Ministry’s inner workings, so at least ten years. The Tenth Floor was divided to accommodate these Departments, and wizarding space below-ground being unreliable, that meant the offices were creatively organized. The elevator deposited Harry in a circular vestibule ringed with doors so close to one another their frames touched. The one Harry was looking for stood open to accommodate the lengthy queue that strung all the way out into the vestibule and halfway around it.

Harry sighed, already restless at the prospect of standing around until it was his turn. But he didn’t want to risk bumping into Moody again before he’d had his wand checked, so he went to the back of the line, crossed his arms, and settled in to wait.

He happened to take a place behind someone familiar. Tall, unmistakable blond hair — but not Lucius, the son he so closely resembled. This was Abraxas, wearing the Malfoy signet on a gaudy chain so long the ring gleamed against the dark green silk of his robes at mid-chest-level.

“Lord Malfoy?”

The wizard startled and turned toward Harry, grey eyes wide, silver hair loose except for where it was tucked behind his pale ears. Harry always forgot how tall the elder Malfoys were.

Lord Malfoy looked Harry over with uncomfortable thoroughness, lingering on his hair, which was still damp from the showers, and his collar. When Harry glanced down self-consciously, he saw it wasn’t folded properly on one side, and quickly raised his hand to fix it.

“Ah,” said Lord Malfoy when his gaze settled on Harry’s face. “Yes. Young Master Potter.”

“How is Draco?” It seemed like the polite question, though Harry couldn’t have been less interested.

Apparently, neither was Lord Malfoy. “He’s doing nothing of consequence,” he said simply. “Whereas, I see you are an Auror trainee,” he added, looking briefly at Harry’s collar. “A wise choice. Did you know that three of the past four Ministers began their careers in the Aurors?”

Harry hadn’t known that. He couldn’t imagine Cornelius Fudge outpacing a determined second-year duelist, in fact.

Lord Malfoy was studying Harry closely. Then, without warning, he reached out a pale hand and adjusted Harry’s collar, even though Harry was fairly sure he had already set it to right. He felt the cool touch of Lord Malfoy’s hand on the side of his neck in passing, and it made him shudder. “So, what brings you to the Department of Wandlore today?”

“Standard wand calibration,” Harry said, blinking against the urge to rub the place on his neck Lord Malfoy had just touched. “We’re supposed to do them monthly, and I’m...behind.”

Lord Malfoy’s lip curled. “What’s between a wizard and his wand should be his own business. Don’t you agree?”

Harry thought of telling Lord Malfoy he was without political opinions or inclinations, despite the conclusions he’d apparently jumped to based on Harry’s last name. But Lord Malfoy was still going on, as though the question had been rhetorical.

“I’m sure the wandmakers are delighted to be feeding at the government’s trough,” he added, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. He followed as the line moved an abrupt foot forward. When Harry didn’t move, Lord Malfoy reached out and touched him again, this time cupping his elbow and drawing him along. Harry wound up closer to Lord Malfoy than he’d been before, and wasn’t sure how to win back any space. Two more people had come off the elevator and gotten into line behind them. He was hemmed in.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Harry admitted. Lord Malfoy looked at him with surprise, but not distaste.

“Hadn’t you?”

Harry smiled in polite muteness.

“You don’t admire the _great_ Dumbledore, then?”

Harry didn’t have to know much about politics to know that the topic of Dumbledore’s aging post-war policies was divisive. “I think my father leans one way, and my mother the other, but I haven’t made up my mind.” It felt like a safe answer. He didn’t add that Dumbledore had been an occasional dinner guest since Harry was six.

“Ah, yes, your mother is the — Muggle-born — girl, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Harry said guardedly. Lord Malfoy was nodding to himself.

“Then, she would understandably lean toward Dumbledore’s reckless liberalism.”

“Actually,” Harry said, annoyed into speaking without thinking, “she owns two copies of _Thoughts and Suggestions_, just so she has one to loan to friends.”

Something very strange was happening on Lord Malfoy’s face, now. The line was moving forward, but this time he didn’t seem to notice. He gazed at Harry with uncomfortable intensity, while his eyes slowly narrowed and the corners of his mouth drew up into a smile that showed all his bright, straight incisors.

“I rather prefer the second volume, _A Humble Solution. _Do you admire Lord Voldemort as much as your mother does, Master Potter?”

Harry hesitated, their locked gazes leaving him at a loss of words. He wouldn’t say his mother _admired _the mysterious author known only by his — pretentious if you asked Harry — one name. But she did enjoy a rousing debate with whomever was willing to offer one over some of the book’s more nuanced philosophies. 

For his part, Harry had never read them; he’d heard them discussed so often he didn’t see the need to.

Harry was saved from answering when someone bumped into him impatiently from behind. Lord Malfoy’s gaze shot over his shoulder, his smile instantly replaced by a look of such venom, Harry flinched too. Whomever had brushed against Harry hastily backed away, and after a long moment Lord Malfoy took Harry’s arm again. This time he tucked his entire hand through Harry’s elbow, pulling Harry against his side enough Harry felt their robes brushing together. Lord Malfoy moved him unhurriedly along at his side. His hand was cool, unnaturally so, even through Harry’s clothes. That must be why he felt a chill blooming on his arm at that point of contact and spreading through his entire body from there.

Harry tried to think of a polite way he could extricate himself from Lord Malfoy’s hold before he caught pneumonia. _What is wrong with him_? In a world of magical ailments and accidents, it could be anything, and it obviously wasn’t natural. 

As though sensing Harry’s rising discomfort, though Harry had been careful not to react to it, Lord Malfoy released him abruptly. There was only one person left between Lord Malfoy and the entrance to the Department, and Harry’s body was quickly returning to normal temperature, which was kind of uncomfortable in and of itself.

The line moved forward again and a witch behind the now-visible, cramped desk in the wedge-shaped Department office called, “Next!”

Lord Malfoy gave Harry a swift wink and walked away. Over his shoulder he said, “I’ll be seeing you, Master Potter. I must keep an eye on a young man so familiar with _Thoughts._” The door to the Department swung closed behind him.

Harry was confused for a moment, until he saw that a little tiny sign had flipped on the back of the door.

_Closed for lunch from noon to one._

Harry snorted. Of course, his luck couldn’t be _that _good. He had class at one, so he supposed he’d just have to hope that Captain Moody believed him when he said the line had been really long.

*

Harry’s Wizengamot memo came during dueling practice the next morning, folded into a winged shape and darting through the training room.

It somehow survived quite a bit of panicked curse-fire from trainees who assumed it was a Charmed object designed to look innocuous. (In their first week Captain Moody had spelled a dozen hatchling Blast-Ended Skrewts to appear as dust bunnies, then given the trainees non-magical brooms and the instruction to “clear the room” without wands. Non-magical brooms, they learned quickly, were very flammable.)

Captain Moody, grumbling, shouted “Wands away!” again and neatly intercepted the folded paper, then waved it around.

“Who’s responsible for this?”

“Isn’t it, um, a Ministry memo?” suggested Harvey Johnson a little uncertainly. “Sir?”

Moody’s false eye spun around an instant before he turned bodily to scowl at Harvey. “No. Correspondence can’t come through the wards into the training room.”

“Unless it’s from Robards,” Harvey said, then seemed to struggle with the very intense urge to literally kick himself. “Sir,” he added weakly.

“Why on _earth_ would Robards be summoning a _trainee_? Unless one of you is getting cited for blood magic again, _Danielson_,” he muttered, deliberately not looking at the slight, mousy-haired Danielson who wilted back into the corner he was standing in, cheeks red.

“That was just one time, sir!” Danielson insisted. A few of the trainees exchanged knowing looks. Harry felt some sympathy for Danielson, to be honest. Who hadn’t been tempted to do a bit of permanent body augmentation with blood magic, after the course where they learned exactly how it was done? And Danielson did have the most pronounced hook-nose that Harry had ever seen, _including_ Severus Snape’s. Unfortunately for Danielson, the Trace reported that kind of thing no matter how old you were.

Captain Moody did the logical thing, which was to let go of the memo and see to whom it flew.

Harry realized it was heading his way and hung his head. He had really hoped to avoid getting any special attention from Captain Moody for once. The note circled his head once, impatiently, before he finally reached out an open hand for it with a sigh.

There was nothing on the parchment, but the words IMMEDIATELY REPORT TO THE OFFICE OF THE HEAD AUROR appeared in a flash of scarlet script in midair before Harry’s face. It was costly magic, so much so that the words were reabsorbed into the parchment, which soared back out of Harry’s hand to return from whence it came. Harry might have smiled at the sight of it, under other circumstances. Passage of the Act for the Recycling and Reuse of Charms Energy had been one of his mother’s first lobbies.

“Potter,” Captain Moody said in a tone of unconcealed threat, “does this mean you have more important engagements than this session?”

Harry just stared. Over Captain Moody’s shoulder he saw a range of expressions, from lingering, breathless horror on Danielson’s face to the not-so-subtle smirk of several people at the prospect of seeing Captain Moody’s wrath directed at someone who wasn’t them.

“Er,” was all Harry said. The tension in the room broke, and he heard snickers as Captain Moody rolled his natural eye, while the magical one stayed fixed on Harry, unnerving.

“Get out of here, Potter. You saw the message. ‘Report immediately’ doesn’t mean ‘stand around gawping.’ Go!”

So Harry went, making his way through the light stream of midday Ministry crowds to the Head Auror’s office across the level from the training rooms. He was about to knock on the ornate double doors when they swung open. Robards himself had opened them and now stood in the gap between them in the doorway, looking harried.

“Potter,” he said shortly. “Come in.”

Harry came in, sat at the chair Robards pointed him to, and then was surprised when instead of taking the swiveling chair across the desk, Robards sat in the armchair arranged next to Harry’s so he could look him in the eye at close range.

“Did you know Abraxas Malfoy is the House of Families’ liaison to the Wizengamot’s Committee?”

Harry hadn’t known. He’d also never heard of the Wizengamot’s Committee, and the only thing he knew about the House of Families was that it existed, and his father thought it shouldn’t.

“He recommended you for a special assignment. It’s not out of the question for a trainee to take an assignment, but this is an unusual task. And as you can cast a Patronus, according to Captain Moody, perhaps including you isn’t entirely arbitrary. Anyway, it’s been decided. You’re going to be on the liaison team. To Azkaban.”

Harry’s mind went blank with confused shock. “_Azkaban_?” he echoed. But the word he was really hung up on was “team.” Robards was sending him into the field.

“Yes,” Robards said shortly. “And you’re leaving in…” he dug a pocket watch out of his pocket and grimaced at what he saw on its smudged face. “Twenty minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said, a little breathless from excitement.

“You’ll report to the universal Floo. Do you remember where it is?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said again in a steadier voice, getting his emotions back under control. “This is part of the reorganization at Azkaban?”

Robards looked surprised. “You know about that?” Then he chuckled, but it was humorless and didn’t so much as disturb his deep frown. “Of course you do. Do you have any opinions about it?”

Harry hesitated, then shook his head. “Not my job, sir.”

Robards looked speculative. “That’s true, but you’re still allowed, Potter. You’re allowed to turn this assignment down, too, if you like?” At the look on Harry’s face, he sighed and sank back in the chair. “No, I didn’t think you would. Trainees are always distressingly eager for the glory of that first assignment, aren’t they? Well, go on, then. You’ll need to change into your uniform. You’ll find it hanging in your locker.”

*

Nineteen minutes later, Harry was a few hundred feet beneath the Department of Mysteries, where he met three senior Aurors.

“Potter,” greeted the only familiar face of the three, a witch named Bell Oleander. She had a lot of tight, glossy ringlets tied up into an elaborate series of knots on top of her head, giving the illusion she was several inches taller than her teammates. She held a lantern on a short iron pole, and the golden light made her dark skin look like amber.

“This is him?” The older of the two wizards was grey-haired but with a face that seemed disproportionately young, like his hair color was changing prematurely. “He looks about thirteen years old. Fabulous.” He turned his head away, pointedly not greeting Harry directly.

The younger wizard was probably five or six years older than Harry and while he didn’t seem thrilled to be teaming up with a trainee, he did smile and shake Harry’s hand, with a glance toward his teammate that suggested he was a little embarrassed by his openly rude manner.

“Goren Matthews,” he said, polite but not warm.

“Harry Potter.” 

“Right,” said the older wizard shortly. He turned toward the sloping corridor carved out of the stone. It extended well beyond the light put out by Oleander's lantern into eerie emptiness. “Let’s get on with it.” He struck off into the dark. 

“That’s Jason Avery,” Oleander said, following at an unhurried pace. Harry found himself eager to stay within the lantern light, and fell into step just to her right. “He’s grumpy. Don’t mind him.”

“Most dangerous assignment since the war ended,” Jason groused audibly, “and we’re supposed to babysit. Unbelievable.”

No one rushed to Harry’s defense, and Goren studiously avoided his eye, making it clear they thought Avery was right in his assessment.

“Are you ready for this, Potter?” Oleander asked kindly.

“Robards didn’t really go into any detail about the assignment,” he admitted. “He just said it involved Azkaban?”

“Don’t you read the _Prophet_, Potter?” Oleander asked without ire. “We’re reforming the barbaric Penal system of wizarding Britain.” She said it in a matter-of-fact tone that made it clear to Harry she wasn’t very concerned about the barbarism of shutting people up in Azkaban, if she thought it barbaric at all.

“I’ve read something about that,” Harry allowed. He’d also heard the spokesperson for the Knights of Walpurgis claim there was no less sensible dedication of resources, considering the immediate need for replacement of aging infrastructure. (For example, the faulty Muggle-repelling charms around the emergency exits from Diagon Alley or the efforts to Vanish the alarming amount of Muggle garbage accumulating in the oceans.)

“It’s definitely become a hot topic,” Oleander agreed, tone mild, and lifted her lantern a little to illuminate a curve in the tunnel. 

“You don’t have to be sarcastic, Oleander,” Avery growled over his shoulder. He was so far ahead of them that he was hard to see, but Harry caught a flash of narrowed eyes and Avery’s hand, braced against the stone wall so he could feel his way along. “Did you know at least ten percent of people serving a sentence in Azkaban are later exonerated? How would _you_ like to be locked up for something you didn’t do, then tortured into insanity?’

Oleander smiled at Avery with exaggerated patience. “The point you’re making sounds strangely familiar. It’s almost like you told me the same thing an hour ago.”

“So, Harry,” Matthews interjected loudly, “we hear you can cast a Patronus?”

Harry might have shrugged it off, but then he heard Avery mumble something unintelligible but that he didn’t have to hear to understand the meaning. So, he raised his wand and thought of the time Sirius lost a bet with his mother and had to play fetch as Padfoot at the Muggle park, and spent the entire time dodging the attentions of an enamored female poodle.

“_Expecto Patronum_!”

A ball of bright white light coalesced from the tip of Harry’s wand, heavy as a storm cloud but, to his continuing frustration, just as amorphous. It was bright enough to illuminate the entire tunnel, and stayed steadily in place until Harry lifted his wand and the trailing silver light reabsorbed into the tip, stirring the air around Harry in a faint, warm current.

“Well done,” Matthews exclaimed. 

Harry flushed. It was a difficult spell so he was proud he could manage it, but it didn’t have a lot of practical applications. “Well, it’s mostly just a way to impress people at parties,” he said with a grin. “Not much use in a fight since it’s noncorporeal.”

“Well, even then, it may not be much use,” Williams said with a shy smile. He waved his wand and a single, sleek mouse spilled out of the tip. It gave off plenty of light but it was more of a pincrick than anything else as it darted around Williams’ feet in a circle. “Depending on what it turns out to be.” He waved his wand again, reminding Harry of how someone would curl their fingers to call over a crup, and the mouse sped right back into the wand, absorbed in a small, final flash of silver light.

“More than a parlor trick in Azkaban,” Avery said, looking at Harry with a modicum of respect in his expression where before there’d been only irritation. “It’ll keep the dementors out of our hair.” _Maybe you’ll actually be some use, after all_, went unsaid.

They’d arrived at the Floo. It was just as eerie and ancient-looking as Harry remembered from his Ministry tour his first week out of Hogwarts. The atmosphere of the place had startled even Harry and Ron into sudden reverence, and he felt the same now.

The curving cave walls gave off a tangible scent of dark magic. Harry knew for a fact the Unspeakables still poured quarts of blood onto the rust-colored rocks paving the hearth. The ever-present green flames burned low under a crude chimney that stretched the many feet to the surface. The fire was fueled by porous lava rock which, when turned to ash, became the floo powder on every wizarding household’s mantel.

“It’s a bit of an experience, using the original to Floo,” Bell told Harry. She put out her lantern and set it on a ledge in the rock that seemed to have been carved for that exact purpose. Then she leaned the pole against the wall beside it, fitting the handle into a little notch in the stone to keep it in place.

“Feels more like a Port-Key, if a Port-Key was actually trying to kill you,” Matthews said cheerfully. “You first, Potter.”

Harry started forward and Matthews caught his arm with a disbelieving laugh. “I was joking, kid. Merlin. You do realize there’s an unregulated prison full of monsters on the other side, don’t you?”

“At least ten percent—” Avery began tersely.

“I meant the _Dementors_, Avery,” Matthews interrupted calmly. Avery’s expression cleared.

“Oh. Right. No argument there. Matthews and Oleander will go through first, Potter, then I’ll follow with you. That way they can make sure the area is secured.”

Harry didn’t like the idea of hanging back like someone in need of protection. A wrinkle formed in his forehead as he started to craft his objection, and seeing the look on his face, Avery rolled his eyes. “It’s your first time to even see the area, Potter. It’s safer if people who know the lay of the land to go in first. Surely you understand that?”

Harry gave a jerky nod, abashed. 

Oleander looked from Avery to Harry and back, then said lowly, “Be nice, boys,” and turned to follow Matthews over the hearthstones. Matthews called “Azkaban!” as cheerfully as though they were going for ice cream. The green flames crawled higher, giving Harry the unsettling sense he was looking at a sketch of a Muggle witch burning in an old textbook, and Matthews’ and Oleander’s bodies wavered like they were a part of the flames, then vanished.

“Spooky, right?” Avery said with sympathy. He took a couple steps closer to the Floo while the fire fell back again into its low boil, like lightning racing across the rock.

“Yeah,” Harry admitted. “How do you think the magic works?”

Avery shrugged. “Not my job to guess. I don’t think even the Unspeakables know for sure. Magical travel is probably much more dangerous than we realize, considering no one really understands how or why it works. Matthews won’t even use the Floo unless it’s a work assignment. Apparently it bothers him that it should be physically impossible. His parents are Muggle physicists.”

Harry only vaguely knew the word. “Physicists?”

“They study the physical world, as I understand it.”

Harry wrinkled his nose. “Well, isn’t magic in general physically impossible, according to Muggles?” His only Muggle experience was with his mother’s family, whom they occasionally visited and whose general horror at having magical relatives was badly-concealed. There were also Hermione’s parents, but he had a feeling their comfort level with the unknown, and their cheerful support of their daughter being totally integrated into a world they were barely permitted to visit, was atypical of Muggles in general.

“Not at all,” Avery said. “The few who’ve studied magic, according to Matthews, chalk most of it up to manipulation of matter and energy by a force beyond the measure of their instruments as they presently exist. But instant travel across space is different. Apparently it should, at minimum, cause us to disintegrate into a wet mist.”

Harry had never felt like less of a Gryffindor. He looked at the crawling green fire, then the soot-blackened rock above it, and all he could imagine was combusting in an instant. 

“We’ll wait for Matthews’ okay,” Avery said, and almost before he’d stopped speaking, Matthews’ head erupted from the flames, startlingly rightside-up, like he was surfacing from a pool rather than a screen of fire. A hand appeared next to the shape of his face and formed a thumbs-up, then the entire specter fell away.

“Ready?”

Harry didn’t hesitate. “Ready.”

“The space where we’ll arrive is a neutral area for negotiation. The prison hierarchy agreed to our terms, but ordinary wards don’t work properly there. So it’s not fully secure, though they’ve honored our requests so far and have seemed fully cooperative. Where I’m going with this is, don’t assume we’re safe even if it seems that way. But we’re the only ones with wands, so really the danger if we stick together is minimal.”

Harry’s heart was beating faster, the way it did before an assigned duel with a particularly challenging partner or in the moment he first spotted the Snitch. “Got it,” he told Avery solemnly, and stepped up onto the red-brown rock, which he almost expected to be slippery, it had been worn to such a polish.

Fortunately, the grasping flames were just as cool as the ones in an ordinary Floo, and Harry didn’t feel at all like he was being slowly burned alive. Though, maybe he did, in a way, if the burning was painless. Harry certainly felt like the fire was somehow breaking him up, making him less dense. His stomach lurched at the thought — _wet mist_ — but before he could panic the sensation reached its apex. With the feeling of being burst apart there was an accompanying, floating ease of mind that he couldn’t struggle against.

He landed on the other side feeling almost drunk.

Avery had apparently anticipated this result. He’d hooked an arm around Harry’s waist to support him. Harry became aware of the close physical contact just as he gradually took notice of the room — a room in _Azkaban_ — and the presence of a few grim-faced inmates, dirt-streaked and wearing rags. He only made them out in a blurry, still-distant way. He was preoccupied with Avery’s sharp ribs and the faint odor of stale sweat.

Harry stumbled away from Avery, blushing and rubbing the feeling back into his cheeks. Matthews smiled sympathetically at him. “Odd, isn’t it? You’ll get a tolerance for it.”

Harry nodded with a quick, grateful answering smile, and looked around the room as it came into better focus. It was very ordinary-looking, which was something of a disappointment considering all the stories of Azkaban’s horrors on which he’d been raised. He remembered his mother’s lesson, that Azkaban had been just a castle, a wizarding home, before it was converted into its present use. It looked it; though medieval in its character, the room had ordinary proportions and some worn but typical furnishings for an informal parlor, including a threadbare sofa before which three prisoners stood, as though they’d just gotten to their feet.

Before Oleander even began introductions, Harry realized with cold horror that he recognized two of them already.

“This is Auror Potter,” Oleander told the inmates. “Potter, this is Bellatrix LeStrange and her husband Rodolphus.”

Bellatrix nee Black, Sirius’ most detested cousin, whose repeated efforts to assassinate key members of the Wizengamot eventually led to her permanent incarceration. She looked much different from the image Harry had seen in old _Prophet_ clippings he’d stumbled over in Molly Weasley’s desk while trying to find and pocket a few spare knuts when he and Ron were ten. She wore rags and her face was dirt-smudged, her hair in a voluminous tangles around her crown that almost looked deliberate.

The Lestranges wore cool expressions and didn’t give away any recognition of Harry, though he did think that Bellatrix’s eyes skimmed him over from head to toe with a vague sort of interest. Maybe the Dementors had led her to forget what James Potter looked like, but maybe not. Harry knew that despite a few marked differences, he wasn’t called his father’s “spitting image” for no reason.

“And this,” Oleander continued, gesturing to the third inmate, “is Gustav.”

“Gustav…?” Harry prompted.

“Just Gustav,” said the inmate, folding his arms. He had a bald head ringed in iron-grey hair that hung to his shoulders, where it had been crudely cropped. Like the other two, he wore rags, but they seemed to fit him much better than the Lestranges. While Gustav seemed perfectly suited to his tattered clothing, somehow the Lestranges looked like they were playing dress-up, and at any moment they’d spell away the soiled cloth and be clad instead in sumptuous robes.

Harry shook off the thought. This wasn’t a game; it was very real. He remembered what Avery had said about the place not being properly warded, and his mother’s reminders when they visited Muggle places that being the only one with a wand didn’t make him invulnerable to other weapons, particularly in a crowd.

Fortunately, though, the door was locked and barred from the inside, and Oleander had cast a simple ward which she was actively sustaining with focused magic. He relaxed a bit, but still kept the handle of his holly wand pressed against his palm through the holster, just in case.

“Shall we…?” Matthews began, starting to sit in one of the armchairs. The inmates, though, stayed standing. Bellatrix spoke in the cool, mildly disdainful tone of every pureblood hostess Harry had ever encountered.

“In fact, we expect to be joined by a fourth representative,” she said, a strange smile growing on her face, sharply lovely. “Any moment now.”

Matthews and Avery exchanged a quick glance. “Three liaisons was the agreement,” Matthews said evenly. 

“Someone’s at the door,” Oleander murmured with a frown. “I feel them against the ward.” 

Indeed, the door was shuddering, as though under significant strain from its other side. Harry and Matthews’ eyes locked just as the door sprang open completely, and before they could draw their wands, the unmistakable force of strong, intent magic coiled around Harry like an invisible _Incarcerous_, and at double strength.

But he’d had enough time to palm his wand, and while he couldn’t move it, he _could_ draw just enough strength from it to Apparate across the room.

He wound up inches away from the figure he’d only caught a glimpse of in the instant of chaos after the door opened. It wasn’t a giant or a beast, but an elegantly-dressed, slender man several inches taller than Harry, with perfect, sculpted features and dark red eyes. He might have seemed inhuman, if a single soft curl hadn’t separated from his neatly combed hair to brush his forehead.

Harry, teeth gritted, managed to bite the inside of his cheek. When the blood flowed, he spat the reddened saliva at his opponent’s feet. A bit of emergency blood magic his mother had taught him, making him swear he wouldn’t tell his father.

The magic turned the blood virulent as acid, and it burned through the patent leather over the wizard’s booted right foot. He let out a hiss, and Harry felt the—wandless, wordless? Merlin—_Incarcerous_ loosen just enough for him to bend his wrist, thereby raising his wand and casting _Emancipare_ with all his might.

He barely had time to recognize he was free before he was collapsing to the ground in a controlled somersault, which turned out to be the right move, as he felt the heat and force of a stunning spell pass over his head in the same moment he dropped. He was vaguely aware of shouts and chaos across the room where the other Aurors were likely still confined and wandless, save perhaps Oleander, who’d had her wand out to sustain the ward.

But when he glanced over, he saw that in fact Oleander was pinned against the wall by Rodolphus Lestrange. He was gripping her throat tightly and her hands were empty. 

Harry barely managed to get his feet beneath him before he felt a fresh wave of magic grip him, hot and firm as a giant hand. He was forced to the floor so fast and hard it knocked the air from his lungs and the back of his head against the rough stone. His vision swam. He’d lost his wand somewhere along the way, he realized desperately when his right fist closed around emptiness. 

The room was quiet. All Harry could see, immobilized as he was, was the ceiling above him and, if he rolled his eyes to his right, the legs of the armchairs, obscuring his view of whatever was happening beyond them. Judging by the quiet, he assumed he wasn’t the only subdued Auror.

Harry had never been in the field. If this was a training exercise, Moody would blow a whistle, glower down at him, and say, _You’re dead, Potter_.

It was something they’d all laughed about more than once in the pub after classes. The one Moody had declared dead that day had to buy the first round. It had been Harry once, laughing wryly and thinking nothing of it.

But now, he realized with a dull sort of dread, it might be true. If the wizard from the doorway chose to point his wand at Harry now, he could cast any spell he liked, and Harry couldn’t hope to stop him. He felt—not fear, exactly—a sort of rage at the choking helplessness.

The only defiant thing he could do now was stare, unflinching, as the wizard came into view. His downturned face, unspeakably lovely. The errant curl on his pale forehead. His cheeks flushed, to Harry’s satisfaction, from a fight he obviously hadn’t anticipated being faced with when he’d come in and dissolved the ward without effort.

Harry’s tongue was stilled against the roof of his mouth, his jaw tightly locked. Probably to prevent a repeat of his mother’s trick. He fervently hoped the wizard had lost at least a toe, then thought furiously that if that was all Harry was going to cost his killer, it wasn’t nearly enough.

The wizard’s booted foot landed on Harry’s other side. He didn’t seem to be favoring it. Harry realized with startlement he was straddling Harry’s waist a moment before he began to crouch down. The fine silk of his robes pooled against Harry’s pinned wrists, and even under the circumstances, Harry couldn’t help shuddering at the sensation. 

The wizard knelt over Harry’s body, his thighs bracketing Harry’s hips. He reached down and touched Harry’s forehead, tracing his finger back and forth in a jagged line. His touch burned pleasantly and left Harry feeling dazed. He couldn’t look away from that horribly lovely face, those strangely-colored eyes that watched Harry so intently.

“Hello, Harry Potter,” the wizard said, quiet and melodious. “My name is Tom Riddle. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Tell them that if they wish to hear my terms, they must send you. Only you.” The forefinger that had been the only point of contact between them lifted from Harry’s face. He rubbed his fingertip against the pad of his thumb, like he was savoring a feeling. Then he stood up and walked away. 

Harry stared at the ceiling. He heard muffled sounds. He rolled his eyes to his left and saw the black silk robes of Riddle’s lower half, striding leisurely toward the door which still stood open. Behind him came the three inmates in their rags, each dragging a limp Auror. Harry wondered if they were dead, or just restrained.

The door closed, and as soon as it did, Harry was free.

He scrambled to his feet, gasping for breath and half-dizzy from getting up too soon. Or perhaps it was from hitting his head; the back of his skull was still throbbing, and when he touched it impulsively, he felt a tacky moisture in his hair. Blood.

He drew his wand and went immediately to the door, hesitating only a moment before he jerked on the handle. It didn’t give an inch. He jerked again, knowing it was useless. Then he tried _Alohomora_ and three blasting Curses, also to no avail. All the magic sprang back as though repelled, evidence of a faultless ward. The kind that shouldn’t be possible in Azkaban.

So he did the only thing he could do. He went to the little fireplace in the corner of the room, where someone had left a single dose of Floo powder, and returned to the Ministry for reinforcements. This time, just as Matthews had said, he was a little less woozy stepping out onto the ledge of hearthstones in the original Floo. For a moment, Harry felt a clawing panic rising up under the veil of shock that had numbed his emotions since he’d fallen pinned by the wizard’s magic to the Azkaban floor. 

But he unstuck his feet, ran to the ledge where Oleander had left the lantern, lit it and sprinted up the corridor with the light bobbing rapidly in time with his steps.

*

Three hours later, Harry was in the office of the Minister of Magic with Robards and Moody.

“There’s just no way I can justify it. If something were to happen... and as he’s only a trainee… no.”

“With all due respect,” Moody growled, “we don’t require the Minister’s permission. We answer only to the Wizengamot.”

Fudge looked too surprised to be properly angry. “All Departments require the Minister’s permission,” he exclaimed after a moment of startled silence. His wand buzzed, making him jump, and then he checked his pocket watch and sighed, standing.

“I’m late for a press conference. Spinning this disaster will be difficult enough, without the _Prophet_ headline we’d get if I sent the Potter Heir into that quagmire. Honestly, Robards,” he said, shooting the Head Auror a stern look, “I can’t believe you even asked.”

He paused at the door and gave the three of them a final exasperated look. “We’ll discuss our strategy tomorrow. Nine o’clock?” And out he went.

When the door closed and they were alone, Harry twisted in his chair to face Robards. “You have to send me. For whatever reason, that’s what he said.”

Robards looked torn between exasperated and endeared by Harry’s recklessness. Then his expression shifted, his eyes fixing on Harry’s forehead. “What’s this?”

Harry had briefly seen the mark in the mirror. “It’s superficial,” he said, quoting the medic that had examined him while he waited impatiently on the edge of the medical unit cot, waiting for word of Robards’ plans. 

It was just a scratch; not even that, really. More like a faintly raised red mark zigzagging to and fro in a semi-vertical line over his right eyebrow. It must have happened when he fell, but he didn’t recall exactly. He supposed a minor injury would have been easy to overlook in the midst of all that had occurred. 

Then he remembered something else. When he was pinned to the ground, Riddle’s lean thighs warm against him — Riddle had traced a tingling path on his forehead.

“Potter,” Robards said quietly, interrupting that thought. “Are you willing to go back in to negotiate? I wouldn’t ask if they didn’t have our people. But no one will force you. So, are you willing?”

Harry thought of the way he’d felt pinned to the floor, helpless and sure he was about to die.

He recalled Riddle’s remarkable power. How his eyes were the burnt-red color of embers. 

“Yes, I’m willing.” His voice was steady.

“You’ve been trained in negotiations, haven’t you?” Robards looked past Harry to Moody, who nodded.

“All right, Potter, we’ll meet in my office tomorrow morning, six sharp. Wear your uniform.”

The Ministry wasn’t technically open until eight. Harry’s eyes widened at the implications. “You’re just going to ignore him?” 

“I did tell him,” Moody said with a dismissive wave, “that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement really only answers to the Wizengamot.”

*

Going home felt surreal under the circumstances, a too-ordinary end to an extraordinary day. Harry found himself trailing his feet, listening to the toes of his boots softly scraping the cobblestones that led up to his building.

“Harry!”

He lifted his head at the shout just as Hermione hurtled into his arms, his face sinking into the springy softness of her cloud of hair. He automatically raised his arms and embraced her in return, blinking in surprise.

“I heard,” she said when she pulled back. Her sharp eyes scanned his face, lingering a moment on the mark on his forehead, about which Harry was becoming strangely self-conscious. He lifted a hand to tousle his own hair, rearranging his fringe over his brow.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Ron can’t keep a secret,” Harry said without ire, looking around expectantly. Then he frowned. “Where is he?”

“He must be on his way. We agreed to meet here when he Floo-called.” She touched Harry’s arm. “You’re really alright?”

Harry started to reassure her, then paused, blew out a long breath and shrugged. “It was scary, for sure,” he admitted. He hadn’t said it out loud. He’d spent all night talking to Aurors, and it wasn’t the kind of thing one Auror said to another. He almost went on to tell her that what had him more preoccupied was the prospect of going _back_ to Azkaban the next morning, but he didn’t want to tempt fate by spreading the secret, not even to someone he trusted absolutely. Also, it would worry her and she might even try to talk him out of it.

“If we’re going to talk about it, we should get out of the street,” Harry murmured. 

The building was in a small wizarding residential district, so the occasional trace of foreign or unfamiliar magic was to be expected. But what Harry sensed as he reached his door was more than that. He grasped Hermione’s hand before she could walk past him and reach for the door handle herself.

“What is it?” she asked with a puzzled frown.

“I don’t know,” he murmured, and aimed a propulsion spell at the door with gentle force.

The door opened easily and without event. Harry began to relax, chiding himself for being paranoid, but then he saw that the door had stirred a sheaf of parchments that had formerly been stacked in his desk drawers and were now, apparently, strewn across the floor. 

Harry stepped inside cautiously, Hermione behind him, both their wands drawn. His apartment was in shambles. Furniture was overturned and broken. Even the kitchenette cabinets were all open, pots and pans and food carpeting the tile.

Even though he was just a trainee, his affiliation with the Aurors meant he was subject to all kinds of rules, regulations, and restrictions regarding where he lived. The most important one was keeping the location of his home a secret, and so what surprised him most of all were the words painted, and not even by magical means, across the wall in the living room.

_There shall be no need for Aurors in the world of his imagination._

He felt a pulse of feeling in his forehead and deeper, in the back of his mind, the strangest sense of...triumph? It was like he’d overheard not someone’s words, but their emotions instead. 

“That’s a quote,” Hermione murmured. He’d forgotten she was behind him. Now she stepped around to stand at his side. “It’s from _Thoughts and Suggestions_.”

“Lord Voldemort’s first book,” Harry murmured. He recognized the line too.

Ron burst in behind them, breathing hard. Harry and Hermione turned, clutching one another instinctively, as Ron looked around with a grimace. But he didn’t seem surprised.

“Here too, then. Fucking hell. I’ve just been home and my place is the same. How were we found?”

“Was it the Knights of Walpurgis?” Hermione waved her wand absently and a splintered chair leg knitted itself and sat upright. 

“It looks like their handiwork,” Ron allowed, with a pointed nod toward the painted message. Harry turned away from them and walked toward the wall where the message was scrawled. He still felt strange, not entirely settled in his own skin, almost like he was on the cusp of sleep. It should have been unsettling but instead he was reminded of that feeling on the other side of the original Floo in Azkaban, when despite the circumstances and the state of his own head, he’d felt oddly relaxed.

An owl landed on the windowsill and tapped the glass. Hermione went to let it in. 

“Okay Harry?” Ron asked. Harry realized he was touching his forehead and jerked his hand away. He met Ron’s concerned stare and nodded.

“How do you think they found out where we lived? And was it _all_ of us?”

“Dunno,” Ron said with an uneasy shrug. “Pretty strange if it was only you and I though.”

“It wasn’t,” Hermione said from the window. She looked up from the letter she’d just opened. “It was department-wide. They’re recommending you stay with friends or family.”

Harry blew out a breath. “Not family,” he said shortly.

“You’ve got that right,” Ron agreed with a matching grimace. They both looked expectantly at Hermione.

“Naturally, you can come to my place,” she said. “But don’t get into it with Lav. That’s all I ask.”

“It’s not entirely within our control, you know,” Ron said, crossing his arms defensively.

“Okay,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes. “Then don’t _instigate_ anything with Lav.”

Harry recalled belatedly that he was going to need to wake and leave for the Ministry at a suspicious hour, but he couldn’t very well back out of the overnight plan now. He decided he could sneak out in the morning and explain—or invent an excuse—later.

“Agreed,” he told Hermione. “Let's go then. It’s already late.”

* 

About an hour after that Harry was curled on a Transfigured sofa in Hermione and Lavender’s living room. He cast an alarm for himself for five a.m. Then he rolled onto his stomach and tried to sleep.

Instead of slumber, though, all he found inside his own head was that second hand emotion he’d experienced briefly when he saw the havoc in his flat and the words on the wall. This time, though, he felt—curiosity. Intense but—playful.

He also had a clear memory of being pinned beneath Riddle. Only now instead of seeing through his own frozen gaze, he felt like he was looking down at himself.

His glasses were askew, his cheeks were flushed. His mouth had been pressed closed, he recalled, but his lower lip trembled. There was a speck of blood there from when he’d bitten himself.

“You surprised me,” said Riddle. Harry hadn’t realized how well he remembered his voice until now, but yes, it had been just thus deep and measured despite the fight. “I enjoy surprises. It is such a rare event when my expectations are exceeded.”

Harry felt strangely pleased, like he’d been complimented. He shifted back to the perspective he remembered. Beneath Riddle, but feeling none his weight. His robes touched Harry’s wrists, cool and heavy. His thighs were warm, but they didn’t press against Harry. His legs were so long he could crouch, poised over Harry like this, without touching him.

“But I did touch you,” the wizard said. He reached out in demonstration and traced his fingertip over the mark on Harry’s forehead. 

Harry sought out that stinging rent in his cheek now with the tip of his tongue. The dull pain in his mouth felt no different than the singing warmth on his forehead. No more real.

In his mind’s eye the tall, unnaturally lovely wizard leaned over him and spoke in his ear.

_“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”_

Harry felt every word between his legs. In fact, at some point he’d gone half hard. He groaned and ground down into the mattress.

He’d had some perverse fantasies before, but nothing like this.

The wizard reached between them with his right hand, still tracing the mark with his left. Harry gasped when he felt a sure, firm grip that wasn’t his own.

His eyes sprang open and he rolled over, panting. He hadn’t touched himself, but he’d felt a hand, unmistakably. Not in his imagination, either — a real, physical touch. 

“What the fuck?” he demanded aloud.

His only answer was a hiccup from Ron, but before he could be horrified by what Ron might have overheard given the failed spell, Ron then snorted and noisily resumed snoring.

Harry slumped against the mattress, disturbed and wide awake.

Twenty minutes of tossing and turning later, he gave up and decided to be a couple hours early to his appointment with Robards and Moody.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fanart for Abaddon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20641616) by [bloop18](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloop18/pseuds/bloop18)


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